Norwich Resident Magazine Aug 2017 – Behind The Cover

The cover of the August edition of the Norwich glossy style guide The Norwich Resident is by NFW Directors Kerry Curl (Photographer) and Alex Hill (Stylist). In this post Kerry shares other images from this project and gives an insight into the ideas behind the shoot.

This photoshoot was part of my final year of university work. Having extensively researched on the continuing influence of the 1970s on image makers today, much of my recent work has explored the way style is a cycle of repeat and renew. I met India, the model for this shoot, at Norwich Fashion Week where she was gaining work experience behind the scenes and I knew (along with quite a queue of people) that I’d really like to photograph her. Alex and I have worked together on other shoots and so a plan was made.

I’d been working a lot on projects which had lots of super glam makeup, big hair and bold lighting and whilst I love all that, sometimes I also just want to strip it all back. I’m not a photographer who feels they only like to work with one way of lighting. Sometimes my projects needs to be loud and vibrant, other times I like to make work that is more quiet and calm.

So for this shoot there was no hair or makeup artist at all. I wanted naturally natural and that isn’t something all models/subjects would want to do so we chatted about it when we were planning the shoot – I like to work in a really relaxed way so it was important to me that India would be cool with the zero makeup suggestion, and she was. India is cool. Those three words probably sum up this shoot perfectly.

Styling wise I aimed to keep a contemporary seventies vibe. I was really keen that there wasn’t a sequin in sight. I love a shimmer of a sequin, adore it, but I wanted this to feel undisco – the opposite of some of the other work I’d been working on recently. Vintage often features in my shoots, not because my work is meant to be especially nostalgic but because this vintage thing is just everywhere and to many people it’s not about trying to go back to another time, it’s just a style ethos. Second hand clothing is also now much more socially acceptable than it used to be and that’s something I want to support and encourage.

Alex completely got this and with the support of local vintage fashion businesses Wake Up Little Susie and The Stylist and The Collector, Alex was able to produce some amazing looks which really created the feel we’d discussed when planning the shoot and looking through images and ideas for the moodboard.

At Norwich Fashion Week we’d had access to some amazing vintage eyewear from Dipple and Conway and although the glasses in this shoot weren’t from them, the inspiration for incorporating glasses in to the shoot was majorly down to seeing all those amazing retro shaped glasses hit the runway during the week.

The plan was for this to be a colour shoot, but I decided to do some black and white edits too. I also shot some 35mm on this shoot which I’m yet to scan (I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve been terrible at letting films await their scanning…and so a backlog builds…) and I also took some video during this shoot which I’m still working on. Not enough hours in the day! The cover image is one of my personal favourite images of India and the magazine has also featured some of my work from other shoots and projects which you can read more about online .